Well, yes, you're quite right in what you said, Amos. With enough cleverness, drive, and a bit of luck, one does have a chance at becoming part of the wealthy elite. ;-) It's a very small chance, but that doesn't mean it's impossible, and I think it's the secret inner dream of a simply tremendous number of people. Certainly it was always my father's obvious ambition to do that, and my mother's obvious hope that it would somehow happen (though she didn't expect to do it herself). It didn't happen, despite my father's most strenous efforts, but it was certainly the holy grail they both longed for. And have I dreamed of being rich too through some fortunate event? Yeah, sure I have. ;-)

But that wasn't really my point. I'm not saying we ordinary folks don't have some chance to reach those heights, and I'm not saying that the elite aren't serfs in a sense too...what I'm saying is that we don't live in a truly representative democracy like we were taught when we were children, we live in a business-run oligarchy that perpetuates a myth of representative democracy and goes through the motions of that myth at election time.

And that's what I feel sad about, because I hoped for better than that when I was young.